To kick off its 10th Red Tape Awareness Week, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business emailed its annual Paperweights that highlight the “worst examples of red tape headaches for business owners across the country, ranging from the eye-rolling to the downright destructive.”
The CFIB listed two Paperweight finalists this year for B.C.
- Town of Smithers, Side Walk to Nowhere, Part 3: “Smithers is back for a third year for a bylaw requiring businesses who do renovations valued over $100,000 to do unrelated offsite work as well, such as building a sidewalk that leads to nothing.”
- BC Government’s Community Benefits Agreement: “The CBAs require employees of construction firms working on provincial infrastructure projects to join specific unions and for the businesses to comply with 336 pages of overly prescriptive rules which go as far as specifying that dinner plates be warmed before serving food to employees.”
“The provincial government also appears to want to get a head start on receiving a Paperweight next time around thanks to their ham-fisted introduction of two new taxes in January which will no doubt induce migraines for residents and business owners alike,” said Richard Truscott, vice-president for B.C. and Alberta. “The way the government has rolled out the Speculation Tax and Employer Health Tax makes them more than worthy of a future Paperweight.”
The CFIB took direct aim at what it called a “negative option” approach, with the BC Government requiring homeowners in the areas affected to fill out paperwork to declare if they are exempt from the tax. The government estimates it will take each person 20 minutes to complete, “which amounts to over 533,000 hours of paperwork for 1.6 million residents on a tax that will only apply to 32,000 people.”
The second item under fire from the CFIB is the Employer Health Tax.
“Information on the new payroll tax, introduced Jan. 1, 2019, has been very slow to be made available for entrepreneurs across the province,” said a news release. “This has led CFIB receiving a growing number of calls from confused business owners with a long list of questions, such as: How do I comply? Do I need to pay the tax? What’s included in my payroll? Can I pay installments? When do I need to register?”
The full list of 2019 Paperweight ‘winners’ includes:
- “The City of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, for its brutal lack of customer service to High Street West businesses affected by a painful and extremely delayed water main replacement.”
- “The City of Toronto, for its new business licensing process, which can only be completed on paper, in person, at one location.”
- “Quebec’s Liquor, Racing and Gaming Authority, for its incredibly stringent amusement regulations requiring businesses to obtain separate, costly and time consuming licenses for every bowling lane, pinball machine and pool table, and renew them annually.”
- “Nova Scotia’s Occupational Health and Safety Division, for demanding employers apply strict hazardous materials handling guidelines to hand soaps and common household cleaners found in the workplace.”
- “The Government of Canada, for its user-un-friendly websites, which are extremely hard to navigate, and make it difficult for small business owners to access the information they need.”
- “Newfoundland and Labrador’s interpretation of cannabis rules, which prohibit even the use of the word “cannabis” in any business that is not a licensed cannabis retailer.”
- “Quebec’s Cannabis Regulation Act, which prohibited one craft brewer from using the word “cannabis” and associated imagery on the labels of his previously legal cannabis-flavoured beer. In a catch-22, while producers can't use the word, Quebec’s liquor board says they must put “cannabis” on their labels.”
